Understanding the complexities of enterprise architecture through structuration theory

Abstract

Even though the interest in enterprise architecture (EA) has in recent years tremendously increased across industries, many organizations continue to encounter challenges, which affects the development, implementation, and practice. As a result, different approaches have been employed to ascertain the challenges, yet they persist. Thus, the objective of this study was to develop a framework, which can be used to examine and understand how various events and factors manifest in their natural settings to cause complexities, during development and implementation of EA in organizations. The qualitative research methods were employed, within which qualitative data were gathered. The interpretive approach was followed, using the Structuration Theory as a lens, to guide the analysis of the data. Based on the analysis, organizational structure, technology, social context, and process-oriented factors were found to be of critical and significant influence in the complexity of EA, from which a framework was developed